What Women Want - Part 2

I’m not sure if it’s last week’s eMarketer  article about how women account for over 60% of all online buying transactions (a whopping 88.5 billion), or last night’s episode of Mad Men – but I’ve got female consumers on the brain.

Where do I start? If you caught last night’s episode of Mad Men, in an out of character feminist moment, Don Draper rejects his consultant’s Pond’s Cold Cream focus group findings, which concluded that women are only interested in snagging husbands. The agency (aka Peggy Olson) wanted to pitch Pond's as an “experience” for women, whereby ritual is created and women look in the mirror and bask in their own beauty - husbands be damned.

Though feminism was probably not on Draper’s mind as much as the fact he would never allow his creative genius to be undone by this female consultant, his position was kind of profound. He believed that the women from the focus group only responded the way they did, because it was the only possibility that had ever been presented to them. They might actually want something else, if they thought it was possible.

In the world of advertising, what we “think” is true about an audience, if not a figment of a bad focus group, could be a narrow interpretation of old school metrics that are due for an over haul. For instance, eMarketer research shows women buy more video games and consoles than men, and just about as much electronics and computers. Does this turn your campaign strategy on its head if you sell these products and target most of your efforts toward men?

What if you could know exactly what your best customers wanted, and where they hung out on the internet? What if you could go beyond clicks and conversions and actually tailor your ads to speak intelligently to your audience, because you know, explicitly, what state of the buying cycle they’re in? All this is possible. But online technology companies are holding the hands of their clients, much more gingerly of course than Don Draper would, to get them past the confines of the past, and open to new ideas of performance metrics and data analysis.

So…. men buy more flowers, greetings, and gifts. Not a big surprise. Also not surprising that women spend 20% more time on retail sites than men. Is it because we like to shop? Or can’t make up our minds? Maybe we just want to make sure we get the best deal. Or, perhaps we abandon those shopping carts to bask in our Pond's Cold Cream ritual? Wouldn't you like to know?

– Layne Salter